Finding Sarah Jane
by Jinxed-Wood
Summary: Sarah Jane goes missing, and Martha and Jack retrace her last steps, finding more than they bargained for in the process.... Part of my 'Job Application' series, full listing of stories on my profile page.


**Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the beeb, all I have is my Microsoft Word...**

**Authors Note: Part of my ever expanding 'Job Application' series, starring Martha Jones!**

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**FINDING SARAH JANE**

_"Attention, all personnel, Beta Alert, Beta Alert, please rendezvous at your nearest armoury." _

The alarm woke Martha with a start, and she clawed at the table and found the light. Dazed, she checked the time. It was six in the morning, just before dawn. Damn it, she knew she should have gone home to the apartment, last night, but she had been so tired… She sighed, rolled out of bed, and quickly threw on some clothes.

_"Beta Alert, Beta Alert, please make your way…. _

She looked for her boots, and found only one. Puzzled, she searched the floor for the missing boot, and she jumped slightly as she saw a movement in the corner of her eye. Was that a mouse?"

_"Beta Alert, Beta Alert…. _

She shook her head; she didn't have time to worry about that now. She pulled open her wardrobe, grabbed her sneakers from the bottom, and half ran, half hopped to the door.

The corridor was in chaos, as the base personnel, both military and civilian, ran in different directions. She grabbed the first passing arm that wore a uniform. "What's going on?" she asked. "Is it a drill?"

The soldier shook his head "We've had a containment breach," he said. "Down in the labs. One of the research teams opened an artefact and…" he shrugged. "You'll know soon enough," he promised.

Martha frowned; that didn't sound good. She made her way to the nearest arms locker, and waited her turn.

"Here," the Armoury officer said, and he dumped an AK47 into her hands.

Martha looked at the weapon. Automatic weapons had been part of her initial training when she joined, but she wasn't expected to use one in the field. She was the gal with the trank gun - Trank Girl, that was her! "I think you might have made a mistake," she said eventually.

"No mistake," the officer said briskly, as he handed her a spare clip of ammo. "On with you, now. The Brigadier is in the main concourse. He wants you at his side!"

"But... but... it's a gun!" she protested.

The officer grinned suddenly. "Relax, Doctor Jones, they're not sentient, just damned persistent - and immune to sedatives, apparently."

"Oh, right." But she still looked at the gun doubtfully, as she made her way to the concourse.

"Doctor Jones!" The Brigadier boomed, once she was within eyeshot. "Get over here, and have a look at this!"

Martha hurried to his side, and then looked at what he was pointing at. An upturned glass jug was on the table, and under it was a small, obviously robotic, creature, scraping at the glass. "What is that?" she breathed.

"We were hoping you could tell us," the Brigadier said gruffly. "They're everywhere! The blooming things seem to be reproducing at a phenomenal rate, there were only a handful, originally." The creature opened its jaws and sunk its teeth into the glass. A crack appeared on the jug.

"Determined little thing, isn't it," Martha observed, as she bent down to have a closer look. "It looks like a gremlin." The Brigadier looked at her blankly. "You know? From the movies?" She sighed. "Never mind."

It _did _look like a gremlin, Martha decided, except not as big, thank goodness, and without the cool hair. It was also completely metallic. "Nano technology?" she asked, thinking aloud. Hey, she'd watched Stargate, who hadn't?

"Nano-what?" the Brigadier asked.

."Never mind, I'm probably wrong, " she said, watching the little creature gnaw through the glass. "Anybody got another container to fit over this jug? He's going to be through in a minute." As if on cue, the jug exploded into a shower of glass, and the creature blurred across the table and down the hall…and disappeared through the doors of the brigadier's offices.

"After it!" the brigadier declared, and Martha had to grin as UNIT's finest scrambled to chase after it, their AK47s at the ready.

"You don't think the machine guns are a bit over the top, Brig?" she ventured.

"Have you ever tried to take a pot shot at a six inch high robot, that goes nought to forty miles in one point eight seconds?" the Brigadier asked in return

"Uh, no."

"Well then, you'll just have to take my word for it, we need the bloody machine guns."

"If you say so, Sir" Martha said.

The Brigadier gave her an irritated look. "You're as bad as him, sometimes," he complained. "Follow me!"

Martha followed, but kept the gun down at her side; she felt ridiculous enough just carrying it. The soldiers, in the Brigadiers outer office, called clear just as they entered, and then jogged into the Brigadiers inner sanctum.

Martha waited by the Brigadier's side, as the soldiers pulled aside every curtain, and looked under every chair. A soldier, who had gotten onto his knees to check under the grate of the fireplace, suddenly froze. "Sir," he whispered. "I've found it, sir."

The Brigadier pointed at the empty coal bucket, and Martha hurried forward and picked it, holding it ready. The soldier lifted the grate with the muzzle of his gun, and the creature stopped in his tracks and looked at them.

"Now!" the Soldier snapped, and Martha brought the bucket down, snaring it. The robo-gremlin, as Martha had privately begun to call them, bounced off the inside of the bucket like a demented ping-pong ball.

An object in the grate caught the brigadier's eye, and he bent to pick it up. "What the blazes - my pipe!"

Martha almost took a step back as she saw the expression on the Brigadier's face. She had always though the words, 'steam coming out of his ears', was a turn of phrase. Now, she wasn't so sure.

"Right, that's it," he thundered. "Condition Alpha! Terminate the buggers!"

"Sir, yes, Sir," Lieutenant Jameson stuttered. "But we kind of have a problem, Sir."

"A problem, Jameson?" The Brigadier roared.

"We haven't figured out a way to do it - terminate them, I mean. There's too many of them."

The Brigadier looked around him, glaring at the huddled group of soldier and officers. "Well, don't just stand there!" he said. "Get one of those squints up here. They let them out of their box, they must have some idea of how to put them back!"

"The...squints are sort of hemmed in, Sir," Jameson piped up, evidently a lot more courageous than he looked.

"Hemmed in?"

"By the little…gremlins, Sir. The Majority of them are clustered around the artefact they arrived in and, as the artefact is in the labs..."

The Brigadier frowned. "They aren't in danger, are they," he asked. "I thought they hadn't actually attacked anything sentient yet?"

"No, Sir, but they do seem to be a bit hungry, and it seems they're... omnivorous?"

"Omnivorous?"

"Yes, it means they'll eat-"

"_Anything,_ yes,_ yes_, I know, man, just tell me what this has got to do with the scientists in the lab being hemmed in?"

"Well, Sir, it seems the gremlins have developed a taste for certain natural fabrics and…and… a few of the scientists have become somewhat…inconvenienced." The Soldier blushed furiously.

The Brigadier gave him a steady look. "Are you trying to tell me that these bloody things have eaten their clothes?

"Sir, yes, Sir, pretty much, Sir."

The Brigadier sighed. "And my morning gets better and better," he said. "Right then, if the mountain won't go to Mohammed, Mohammed shall go to them!

The Brigadier stormed through the door, his troops following at their heels, and Martha shook her head with amusement as she took up the rear. Try as she might, she couldn't take the little robotic pests seriously. It wasn't as if they were dangerous to human life…the curtains and their underwear might be in peril, but not their lives.

A small, glinting blur caught the corner of her eye, and she stopped. The robo-gremlin had shot down a side corridor, in a different direction to the labs. She glanced at the Brigadier's retreating back and came to the conclusion he'd survive without her for a little while.

Grinning, she trotted down the hall and stopped as she spotted the little mite chowing down on a potted palm tree at the end of the corridor. She slowed and crept along, maybe if she caught it unawares….

A tight, red laser beam came from just out of view, and vaporised the robo-gremlin in its tracks. Martha froze, surprised, If she didn't know any better, she'd think that came from-

"K-9?" she called out unsurely.

" _Mistress?" _

"K-9, what are you doing here?" she asked, surprised, as the Robot rolled into view.

_"Looking for my Mistress, Mistress. _"

Martha digested his words. "What makes you think she's here, K-9?" she asked.

" _The Doctor informed me that information pertaining to my Mistress's location could be located here _."

"The Doctor?" Martha said. "When were you speaking to him?"

_"Eighteen point six seconds ago, Mistress. _"

Martha's eyes narrowed, as she did the math. "He's right around the corner, isn't he?" she drawled.

_"I am not permitted to answer that question, Mistress _."

"That would be a yes, then," Martha said dryly, as she rounded the corner and glared the Doctor's bashful face, as he leaned against the TARDIS. "What are you _doing _here?"

"Looking for you," he said, lying through his teeth. " _Blimey, _what's goin' on here?

Martha ignored his question. "What has happened to Sarah Jane?"

"Um, she's missing?" he said, distractedly, as he leaned down and sorted through the ashes of the robo-gremlin. "I though K-9 already brought you up to speed on that point." He took out his sonic screwdriver and poked at the ashes with it. "Oh, that's not good, nano-recyclers…without any base code, too… they're like appetites on legs without a base code. No discretion."

"Nano-recycler?" Martha echoed, the disappointment showing in her voice.

The Doctor gave her a knowing look. "Why? What were you calling 'em?"

"Robo-gremlins," she admitted, a bit embarrassed..

The grin took over his face. "Brilliant!" he said, jumping to his feet. "Almost poetic, in a brothers Grimm sort of way."

"Just as long as we don't have a Grimm ending," Martha said, not able to help herself.

"Ho, Grimm ending!" the Doctor snorted, "That's good, I must remember that - " He clicked his fingers. " Oh, baking soda!"

Martha blinked. "Baking soda?"

"Baking soda, big dash of vinegar, give it a good swirl together, shaken not stirred, and then spray the buggers - those little plant misters work a treat."

"Baking soda and Vinegar," Martha said flatly. "That all it takes."

"Seizes up their circuitry. Not as tidy as a laser, of course, you'll have to melt them down, afterwards - I'd do it twice, if I were you, nano technology can be pretty sturdy"

"Martha sighed. "Right, thanks for that."

The Doctor shrugged, looking at his shoes. Yes, well, glad I could help," he muttered. "Must be off now-" Martha caught him by the arm, and the Doctor looked at her, startled.

"Sarah Jane?" she reminded him, gently.

"Oh, right, Sarah Jane," he said, looking momentarily flustered. "Truth is, I don't know where she is, and that's a bit troubling, see, because I _always_ know where my - you all are."

Martha raised an eyebrow at that. "Really?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much," he admitted. "Except for Rose of course, coz she's gone, you know…and now Sarah Jane." He sounded distressed, _really_ distressed. That worried her.

"How bad could it be?" she asked. "Is…" She took a deep breath. "Is she dead?"

"No, _no_," he said, and Martha breathed out again. "Or, at least, not _just_ dead; I'd know _when_ she was, if that was the case."

Martha's rearranged his words into comprehensible sentence in her head, and nodded slowly. She _thought_ she knew what he meant. "Another dimension?" she asked, as she though of Rose.

"Possible," the Doctor admitted. "But not probable…but then, nothing is probable, really; or even _possible_. It shouldn't have happened."

"Oh my, Luke!" Martha suddenly thought. "He must be worried sick!"

The Doctor brightened. "Ooh, I quite _liked_ him; resourceful little fellow, isn't he? Had K-9 track me down, quick as you like, the moment he realised Sarah Jane was missing. Of course, I was already looking by then, but still…pretty clever."

"But where is he?" Martha asked. "We can't just leave him in the house by himself. Something might happen to him - Oh, you didn't bring him with you, did you? You can't keep a kid on the TARDIS, it isn't safe."

"What do you mean, not safe!" the Doctor protested. "It's perfectly safe. Why Susan spent many of her formative years in the TARDIS and-

"Who's Susan?"

"My Granddaughter-"

"Your granddaughter?" spluttered Martha, in amazement. "But why haven't you mentioned-" She remembered. "Oh, of course."

"I left Luke with his neighbours," the Doctor said softly. "Seemed a good sort, he should be fine there. I should go." He nudged against the TARDIS's door, and held it open for K-9.

"Why did you come here?" Martha asked, puzzled. "Not that it isn't nice to see you, but Sarah Jane isn't here. You must have known that."

He shrugged. "Just checking in," he said. "Mind how you go." And, before Martha could ask any more questions, the TARDIS door shut behind him, and its engines began to thrum.

Martha stared at the departing TARDIS, her eyes widening as realisation struck. He'd come because he'd been worried. He'd been afraid that something might have happened to her, too. "Oh, _that's_ not good," she murmured.

But where was Sarah Jane?

Martha frowned, and resolved to phone Jack as soon possible, but first she had to go to the kitchen.

She had some baking soda and vinegar to mix up.

* * *

The sun beat down on both of them brightly, in the university quad, as Martha hastily adjusted her disguise, and looked at Jack anxiously. "Do I look okay?" she asked, as she smoothed down the jacket and skirt of her brown pinstriped suit. "Professional?"

"Almost Doctor like," Jack said, with a smirk, and Martha gave him a puzzled look.

"Jack, I _am_ a doctor."

"So I can see," he drawled.

Martha looked down at her suit. "Well, I don't - oh,_ ooooh_!" she laughed. "Let's not let Freud look into that too much, eh?"

Jack grinned. "Well, if it helps any, I doubt he'd _ever _look that good in heels," he said.

"And there's an image I never wanted to conjure up," Martha grumbled lightly. "Right, my name is Doctor Martha Jones, and I'm a forensic anthropologist."

"And a very fetching anthropologist you make, too," he said. "Just one more_ tiny _detail, though." He pulled a pair of gold-rimmed glasses out of his breast coat pocket, and delicately placed them on her nose.

"Cute, Jack, very cute," Martha said dryly.

"Why thank you, Miss Moneypenny, I try my best," he said, with a grin. "Seriously, though, there is a micro camera in the frame. It'll record everything you see."

"Very James Bond," Martha said, with a grin. "Think she'll believe me?"

"I don't see why not," he said. "The papers I gave you are best forgeries in the business. I've used that guy to doctor my passport and birth certificate for decades; and Tosh has taken care of your electronic trail, and set up a few secure lines, just in case she calls to verify the credentials. She'd have to be one paranoid broad to suspect something."

"She's the last person to have seen Sarah Jane alive, Jack. Paranoid mightn't even cover it."

"Relax, honey, you'll do great. Just be you usual charming self, and get your foot in the door. Professor McNamora will be bowled over."

"I wouldn't be so certain of that, she has a reputation for being a dragon."

"With a name like Winnie, she can't be that bad," Jack soothed.

"Really? Winnie? God, talk about cruel and unusual punishment."

"That's right," he said. "Pity is your friend, go forth and conquer!"

Martha rolled her eyes, but tucked her leather portfolio under her arm. "Wish me luck!"

"Break a leg, sweets!"

Trinity Hall was one of the oldest and most respected of the Oxford colleges, and the sheer history of the building seemed to press down on Martha from all sides, calling her a fraud. Which she _was_, but it was all in a good cause, right?

But, eventually, she found the the appropriate door, and knocked. "_Come in,_" said a brisk voice, through the thick wood.

Martha slid into the room, and noticed a petite, fair-haired woman, in her forties, perched on the end of the secretary's desk, with a phone held to ear by her shoulder. Silently, she waved Martha in to the inner office, as she continued to talk in the phone. "I'm sorry, Doctor Winters, but Professor McNamora isn't available, right now," she said, in a surprisingly nasal tone. "Can I take a message?"

Not wanting to be seen eavesdropping, Martha walked into the inner office, only to be greeted by an empty room. Before she could get itchy feet however, the secretary slipped in behind her.

"Sorry about that," she said, her voice suddenly soft, yet clipped. "I couldn't get that damned man to go away. It's a terrible state of affairs when one has to pretend to be one's own secretary on the phone - you must be Doctor Jones."

Martha smiled and nodded. "Professor McNamora, I presume," she said.

The professor grinned. "I'm hardly Livingston, m'dear, although they are some that might say we're working in a jungle. Please, _do_ take a seat."

Martha perched on the chair in front of the desk and watched the professor fuss with the papers on it. "So, you want to work with the collection our department acquired after Mr Saxon's death?" she asked.

Martha felt the blood drain from her face. "Mr Saxon?" she said weakly.

"Oh, you wouldn't know, of course," the professor said, absently. "The college is trying to keep that part under wraps; although, it wasn't really his collection, but his father in law's. Now,_ he _was a strange one; member of the peerage, of course, but never seemed to do anything with it, except potter around in that rambling old house of his… but you really don't want to know about him, do you? You want to see the collection, although its provenance should be looked into further, if we're ever going to make heads or tales of it. "

"I see," Martha said warily. Why hadn't she made the connection before - why hadn't Jack? Surely one of the background checks should have turned this up?"

"Doctor Jones, are you all right," Professor McNamora asked, concern showing in her voice.

"Oh, I'm fine," Martha said, recovering. "I was just a little taken aback, that's all."

"Yes, well, you should be, I suppose," the Professor sighed. "It amazing the kind of subterfuge the universities get up to; anything to improve their collections… do you want to have a look at it?" She said it like an adult offering a child a sweet.

Martha blinked. "Why yes, I'd love to," she said shakily. This is what she'd come to see, after all, the famous Hardbrook hieroglyph tablets. Carbon dated at over fifteen thousand years old, in a language nobody recognised; they were one of the biggest mysteries in modern archaeology. No photographic images of the tablets were in existence and less than ten people on the planet had ever seen them with the naked eye, as they were kept under lock and key in a climate controlled vault. Sarah Jane Smith had thought they were important, and she'd lied her way into the university to see them.

She hadn't been seen since.

"Well, let's go have a look at them, shall we?" Professor McNamora said, in a low conspiratorial tone. "Technically, we're supposed to fill out all these forms, in triplicate, before I let you in to see them; but what they don't know, won't kill them, eh? Besides, I've been dying to have a forensic anthropologist have a look at them, and it will be weeks before the department makes an official appointment. I'm a good linguist, Doctor Jones, and I do have a certain talent for deciphering ancient hieroglyphs, but even_ I_ need a context to work with, and so far, I've got nothing."

Martha smiled at the enthusiasm in Professor McNamora's voice. It was obvious she loved her work. She found herself struggling to remember that the professor was a suspect in Sarah Jane's disappearance. "I'll do my best to give you one," she promised, as she rose to her feet.

The professor grinned widely as she picked up a set of keys, an expression that made her face look at least ten years younger. "Follow me," she said.

Martha followed the professor, though the winding corridors, and down the stairs, her hand slipping into he pocket to turn her tracer on. Now, even if she_ did _disappear, Jack would at least have the exact location of her disappearance.

Professor McNamora gave Martha an apologetic smile as she led her down a steep set of stone steps. "Not very inviting, this part of the college, I'm afraid," she said. "Something to do with its subterranean location, I've no doubt. It used to be the cold room until it was converted."

Martha hoped she looked excited and not nervous, as the professor opened the door, and felt around inside for the switch. A low ambient light flooded the open door frame, and the Professor stepped aside.

"I can't let you into the room proper, of course," the professor said. "Not without the right get up. The tablets have held up well against the millennia, but no point in taking chances, eh?"

Martha nodded silently as she approached the glass window and looked into the chamber on the other side.

"Beautiful aren't they?" Professor McNamora breathed. "And so mysterious. They were found in Tibet, you know, under the altar of a Buddhist monastery; a language with no recognisable symbology, no apparent connection to any other language we've encountered, no Rosetta stone – a lost civilisation, perhaps?"

Martha felt her throat go dry. "Could be," she said hoarsely.

The professor looked at Martha, her eyes keen. "I was the same way, when I first saw them," she said. "Bloody speechless; I mean, how many times does a linguist, especially one who specialises in ancient languages like I do, have an opportunity like this?"

And, again, Martha nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

The professor looked at her watch, and sighed. "Well, I'm afraid I have to draw this to a close, Doctor Jones, but I will be backing you, at the next faculty meeting, for the open position. It's obvious you have a feeling for the project. I think that kind of thing is important, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Martha murmured distractedly.

Dazed, she followed the professor out of the chamber and made her goodbyes. The moment the professor was out of sight, she pulled out her phone, and speed dialled Jack. "Where are you?"

"The quad, North West corner; Martha, are you—"

She hung up, not wanting to have this conversation over the phone, and half walked, half ran out of the building, blinking in the harsh sun as she bolted through the doors. She looked around, noticed she was getting some funny stares, and slowed her step, her eyes scanning the quad for Jack's familiar gait.

And there he was, hurrying in her direction.

"Martha," he said, frowning, as he hooked her arm with his and led her towards a bench. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Martha let out a nervous laugh. "Guess I have, in a way," she said.

He pushed her onto a seat. "Spill," he said quietly.

Martha took a deep breath. "I saw the tablets, Jack," she said. "And I recognised the language, I _recognised_ it!"

"So?" Jack said, with a shrug.

"Jack, there is supposed to be only one place in the entire universe that _that_ language exists in, anymore, and that is the TARDIS!"

Jack paled. "That's impossible, Martha, they were wiped from time, remember? There are no artefacts."

"No mistake," Martha said, suddenly feeling afraid. "I saw that language, every day, for months on end; written on the walls, on the console, in the library….those tablets were written in_ Gallifreyan,_ Jack, I'd bet my life on it."

* * *

The laptop, propped on top of the dashboard, threw back the images Martha's glasses had filmed. Even on the LCD screen, the tablets were ominous looking.

"So, what do you make of it?" Martha asked.

Jack shook his head in bemusement. "Twelve tablets, all just over seven foot high, and three feet wide. It looks like the glyphs are inscribed in stone, which is… weird; not exactly high-tech, after all.

"Neither are pocket watches," Martha reminded him. "Looks are usually deceiving, when it comes to Timelord technology, remember that."

Jack threw her an amused look. "I'll see what I can do," he drawled.

"What? Oh, sorry, just a bit tense, I suppose," Martha admitted. "Can you make out the inscriptions?"

"A symbol here, a symbol there, and even then only a rough approximation of. Gallifreyan doesn't translate well into human languages."

"I'll just bet," Martha muttered, peering at the screen. "Hey, what's that? On the left hand side of the tablet, at the half way mark."

"I'm not sure," Jack admitted. "Here, let me…" he paused, rewound, and zoomed in on the symbol. Unlike the others, it was practically on the edge of the tablet, not part of the main text.

"It looks familiar," Martha muttered.

"Doesn't surprise me," Jack said. "It's a numerical value. Five, I think… well, kinda." He tapped at the keyboard, and zoomed in on the other edge of the tablet "There," he said. "Another one…or should I say three?"

They looked at each other. "Try the other tablets," Martha said softly.

Jack rewound the tape, and zoomed in on the other tablets. Sure enough, they were all marked in the same way. "Okay," Jack said, into the silence. "I just want to check if we're on the same page here – does this look like what I think it looks like?"

"Flat pack Gallifreyan technology?" Martha asked, with a nervous giggle.

"Yeah, same page," Jack muttered. "Try his number again."

Martha dialled the mobile phone she'd given the Doctor. No answer, again. "Maybe he's thrown it away," she muttered.

"Martha, you've seen the guy's wardrobe, the Doctor never throws _anything_ away."

"Which means he's out of reach…. like Sarah Jane."

Jack bit at his thumbnail, a sure sign he was nervous, and thinking. "Want to do some breaking and entering?"

"Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"What? You don't think a life of crime would suit you?"

Martha looked at him "Right," she said. "Tonight?"

Jack grinned. "I'll bring the ski masks."

* * *

Martha fought down the familiar wrench of nausea she felt, from the transmat beam, as they materialised inside the chamber holding the tablets. They had decided it was useless trying to steal them. They were too cumbersome to move easily and, while it was probable they could get UNIT, or even Torchwood, to officially commandeer them, both of them felt reluctant to do so, without passing it by the Doctor first. Some loyalties died hard.

"Right," Jack said, as he shone the penlight on the nearest tablet. "We have to make this quick. If we're here too long, the ambient temperature of the room will move out of its parameters, and someone will come looking."

They searched the edges of the tablets and found the correlating numbers. "You sure you want to do this?" Martha asked. "Last chance to back out."

Jack smirked. "Do you really expect an answer to that?

"No, suppose not," she said, with a small laugh. "Right, from the way the numbers are arranged, I think the tablets are supposed to be arranged in a circle. Let's get them off their stands."

Quickly, they heaved the tablets off their stands; they were lighter than they looked, but not by much. They moved the stands into a circle and then, carefully, put the tablets in the right order, pausing before they put the last piece into place.

"I'm terrified," Martha admitted.

Jack undid the restraints on his gun in reply. "If it's you-know-who, I'm not hesitating this time, no matter what the Doctor thinks."

"Right with you," Martha said grimly, as they clicked the final tablet into place. A hollow thrum filled the air, not unlike that of a TARDIS, and Martha and Jack looked at each other uneasily, as the tablets seem to stretch and expand, their edges seeping into each other, encircling the two of them.

"It couldn't be, could it?" Martha ventured, as the stone rose and curved over them.

"Oh, it could be, all right," Jack said grimly, as he checked the data on his wristband. "But it isn't." Martha reached out to touch the walls, and Jack snatched at her hand. "Don't _touch_ it," he said. "Don't touch_ anything_. We don't know where we'll end up."

"But I thought you said this wasn't a TARDIS," she asked, puzzled.

"Oh, it isn't but it still could take you on one hell of a trip," Jack said. "You could call it a TAADIS, I suppose."

Martha looked at him, amused. "A what?"

"Time and _Alternative_ Dimensions in Space," he said, with a shrug. "Sorry, not good with the names thing."

Martha's eyes rounded in understanding. "But that explains everything," she breathed. "How Sarah Jane disappeared so completely, how the Doctor couldn't sense her… everything!"

"It also explains how this thing survived the Time War," Jack said. "Just as the TARDIS survives outside time, this survives outside dimensions, _all_ dimensions."

"Oh, whoah," Martha said. "Jack, this is amazing. Can you imagine the things this ship could do… you could bring back Rose!"

"Yeah, I think the Doctor already figured that out," jack said dryly. "Hence the incommunicado bit."

Martha frowned. "But if the Doctor and Sarah Jane used the… the… TAADIS." She grinned at the word. "Why is it still here."

"Might as well ask how the TARDIS can visit different points in Time," Jack said, with a shrug. "Maybe it hasn't gone yet, maybe it's been there and back, maybe all dimensions are one to it, and the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and you and I are all standing in the same point of time and space, but not in the same reality…" he stopped, and shrugged helplessly.

"Timey-wimey, wibbley-wobbley, with maybe some flim-flammery added for good measure," Martha concluded wryly.

"Pretty much, yeah," Jack sighed.

"So what do we do now?" Martha said. "And why isn't there a console?"

"I think we're looking at the console," Jack said, waving at the walls. "The tablets, that's what the inscriptions were, the control mechanisms."

Martha looked at the glyphs on the wall, they seemed to be etched deeper, somehow, and larger. Martha squinted, and peered closely, was it her imagination, or was… "They're glowing," she said. "It's dim, but they're glowing."

"Great," Jack said flatly. "Now if we can only figure out what the glyphs actually mean."

"I recognise one!" Martha said, excited, pointing at a glyph. "That's the one for accessing the monitor's visual memory! The Doctor made sure I knew it on sight, before I had to take care of him when he was human... man, I lost count of the amount of times I rewound that visual file - sometimes, it was the only thing that kept me sane!"

"That bad, huh?"

"Black serving girl in 1913 Britain, you do the math!"

Jack winced. "Ouch!"

"I got through it," Martha said, with a shrug. "Although I think the Doctor still dwells on that time a lot." She took a step forward, her hand hovering over the symbol. "Shall we try it?"

"It's as good a choice as anything else," Jack said.

Martha bit her lip, and pressed down.

"QWUIEfpsofgnfwoeNUSG!!"

Jack jumped, startled, and Martha shot a glance at him, then let her jaw drop. "Jack, behind you."

The Holographic image shone in the middle of the room, revealing a petite, slender woman dressed in a long, elaborately embroidered robe. Her fair hair was intricately arranged and bejewelled, but her eyes were hard and unyielding. Behind her, stood a large, imposing room and, beyond that, stood a row of high, wide windows.

They were on fire.

Martha stared at the woman as she spoke, her voice liquid, but the words an incomprehensible gibberish.

"The ship isn't translating for us," Jack said quietly. "You'd need a Timelord for the connection to work properly."

"Yeah, funny you should say that," Martha said softly, as she stared at the image. The face was younger, the hair was brighter, but the eyes… those eyes… they were as old as time itself, and nothing like the eyes she'd looked into before... damned chameleon arches.

"Martha?" Jack asked. "What's wrong?"

_I think I've just figured out whose ship this is._ Martha didn't know why she didn't say the words aloud; maybe it was instinct, maybe the ship was influencing her, who knew?"

"There has to be a way of figuring out where Sarah Jane ended up," she said. She looked at the wall, and spotted the glyph she'd always privately thought of as the fast forward button. The Hologram blurred, and both Jack and Martha took a hasty step back as the Master suddenly appeared in front of them.

"A hologram, just a hologram," Martha said firmly.

"What's he doing?" Jack wondered, as the images followed the Master around the TAADIS, as he poked and prodded at the symbols.

"Nothing much, by the look on his face," Martha observed. It was true, the Timelord looked furious.

"Guess the ship's security was Master proof," Jack said, with a smirk.

Martha shuddered. "Doesn't even bear thinking about. You saw what he did to the TARDIS. Imagine what he could have done with this!"

"Fast forward?" Jack asked.

Martha nodded and pressed the glyph again. Sarah Jane appeared in the room, a thoughtful frown on her face. "Yes!" Martha crowed, giving Jack an impulsive hug as she saw Sarah Jane examine one of the panels. "I think we might have got lucky!"

Jack laughed. "Oh, that one's too easy," he teased.

Martha punched his arm as they watched Sarah Jane walking along the wall, a piece of paper in her hands. She stopped at a set of symbols that looked vaguely familiar.

"They look like the TARDIS's navigational controls," Jack said. "Almost… a few symbols I don't recognise, though."

Sarah Jane touched a sequence of glyphs, and the stone wall below them blurred, revealing a touch screen. The watched as Sarah Jane stared at the paper she held, then tapped in two sequences.

"Rewind that," Jack said urgently, and Martha obliged. He pulled out a notepad and pen and began to scribble furiously, as Sarah Jane punched in the sequence once more. "And again." The hologram played out the scene for a third time and Jack gave a sign of satisfaction. "Got it," he said.

"Got what?" Martha asked.

"Navigational information," he said, showing her the pad. "See this? That would be the destination coordinates, and that would be her place of origin, right here…I think."

"You think?"

"Martha, do I look like a Timelord to you? Sure, I come from a century whose understanding of time and space is a bit more sophisticated than yours; but I'm not the Doctor!"

"Sorry," Martha said. "Didn't mean to snap but…oh wait, what's happening?"

They turned to look at the hologram and watched as Sarah Jane crossed the room, and tapped another glyph, which began to glow brightly. A platform rose in the middle of the room, and began to pulse. Then, Sarah Jane took a deep breath and stepped _onto the platform._

"That's one crazy broad," Jack muttered disbelieving.

"That's one _disappearing_ broad," Martha countered, as Sarah Jane was bathed in a bright orange light and faded away. "Right," Martha eventually said. "Coordinates, you said? Lets do this!"

"Martha, what if we can't get back—"

"_I_, not _we,_" Martha said firmly. "You said that there are two set of coordinates, one for here, and one for there. What if Sarah Jane can't get back because she didn't realise she needed someone to man the controls and bring her back by reversing the coordinates?"

Jack eyes narrowed. "That makes a suspicious kind of sense," he said.

"Well, I may be only a twenty first century girl, but I did learn one very important lesson in my time with the Doctor," she told him.

"And what is that?"

She grinned. "If in doubt, reverse the polarity."

But Jack wasn't smiling. "This is dangerous, Martha."

"_Life_ is dangerous, Jack," Martha said firmly. "And let's face it, would you rather have _me_ operating the navigational controls? That's your bag, and we both know it."

"One hour," he said, after a moments pause. "Then I'm reversing the coordinates – and if that doesn't work, I'm coming in after you!"

"Done!" Martha said.

Jack gave her rueful look as he copied Sarah Jane's actions with the glyphs. The touch screen appeared, and Jack stabbed in the coordinates. "Ready?" he asked, his hand an inch above the activation glyph.

"Ready."

He pressed the glyph and the platform rose, and Martha felt her mouth go dry. "Right," she said, more to herself than him. "I can do this." She stepped onto it and felt it warm under her feet. "Something's happe—"

Light filled her eyes, impossibly intense, as her centre of gravity seemed to fall away. She tried to regain her balance, but there seemed to be no solid footing under her. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, it was as if she didn't exist anymore, as if she was a dream, and then—

"—ning!" She fell to the ground in a heap, feeling grass under her fingers. Where was she? Had it worked? She rolled onto her back, and looked up at night sky above her. For a moment, she thought it was blurred vision, so she blinked and looked again.

There were two moons in the sky.

* * *

Two moons: one large, fat and familiar; the other, smaller, bluer, a sliver in the night sky. Martha thought of what Jack had said, that this was an alternative reality, an alternative Earth.

One with two moons.

The overgrown grass was damp beneath her, and Martha sat up slowly and looked around. She seemed to be in a sort of clearing in a forest, although the trees looked rather strange in the dim light, more like large fronds, or palm trees, interspersed with huge, tall spikes of growth, like impossibly tall pine trees. Sequoia, thought Martha, that's what they looked like.

A low, ground trembling bellow rippled through the trees, and Martha shivered. That didn't sound good. It sounded like trouble, in fact.

"Allons-y," she whispered to herself, trying to gather courage as she got to her feet.

Insects chattered in the humid, night air, and a bird called out from the branches above. If it _was_ a bird, Martha thought suddenly, as she cautiously kept an eye on the trees above. The bellow rumbled once more, and Martha froze in her tracks. The birds and insects quietened, for a brief moment, and then started up again.

Taking that as a good sign, she kept going, following the sound. She wasn't sure exactly what her plan was. She'd been hoping there'd be someone to ask for directions when she got here, so much for _that _idea.

It appeared that _this_ Earth didn't seem to have a problem with retaining its rainforests. She had a sneaking suspicion this was because there weren't any actual humans around.

Martha heard the roar of water in the distance, and picked up her pace. Most people headed towards the nearest water source in a wilderness, she doubted Sarah Jane would be any different; she checked her watch, half an hour had gone by.

Suddenly, the trees came to an abrupt halt, and Martha found herself tottering on the edge of a steep incline. She staggered back, reeling more from the view that the unsteadiness of her feet. "Oh My God," she said, as she stared at the herd of brontosauruses paddling, and drinking, around the edges of a waterfall that poured into a huge, still lake.

One of the beasts extended its neck upward and Martha watched in fascination as it threw back its head and bellowed into the air. So it _had_ been them she'd heard. She crouched down and sat on her haunches, her eyes taking in the sight, even as she tried to figure out what to do. This world was so vast, and Sarah Jane had been here days. She could be anywhere—

A hand fell on her shoulder, and Martha yelped.

"Sssh! We don't want to attract any predators."

"Sarah Jane!" Martha whispered hoarsely. "Am I ever glad to see _you_."

Sarah Jane smiled ruefully. She looked a little grubby around the edges, but not really any worse for wear. "Not half as glad as I am to see you, I think," she said. "Please tell me you've left someone manning the controls?"

"Relax, Jack is there," Martha said. "Which reminds me, I'm not sure if our physical location has much bearing on how the TAADIS works but—"

"TAADIS?"

Martha shrugged. "Time and _Alternative_ Dimensions In Space," Martha explained hurriedly, as she straightened. "Jack named it."

"Well, I suppose it's an _accurate_ description," Sarah Jane said dryly. "You were saying something about our physical location?"

"We'll talk as we walk." Martha looked at her watch. "Make that run," she amended, as she grabbed Sarah Jane's hand and began to retrace her steps. One of the advantages of traipsing though the jungle without a clue, thought Martha, was that you tended to leave a mile wide trail behind you. They ran through the trees, ignoring the irritated chittering from the surrounding brush as they barrelled through the undergrowth.

"We're going back to the clearing?" Sarah Jane asked.

"Better safe than sorry."

"Um, there might be a problem with that."

"What problem?"

They broke through the tree cover, and Martha shuddered to a stop as she eyed the three figures standing there. They were small, barely five feet high, but they stood on their hind legs, and had opposable thumbs that held long, sharpened pieces of wood. Their long, narrow heads twitched to the side and eyed them through slitted pupils, as their narrow tails switched with agitation.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," Sarah Jane said softly. "No higher order mammals here, so…"

"Intelligent, humanoid dinosaurs," Martha said, amazed. "Are they dangerous?"

"They're scared," Sarah Jane said. "They usually just throw rocks at me, until I go away, but normally they don't give chase. Of course, now there are two of us, and their village is very close by…"

"They might consider us enough of a threat to try to kill us," Martha concluded, and one of the creatures took a step forward and let out a scream of high pitched noises, while waving his stick at them. "Let me guess, that's dinosaur, for 'bugger off'," she added warily.

"How long until Jack…?"

Martha let her eyes wander down to her watch. "Two, maybe three minutes."

Sarah Jane nodded distractedly. "Right then, we'd better sit down," she said, as she slowly began to lower herself to the ground.

"Uh, Sarah Jane, I'm not sure this is such a bright idea," Martha said, under her breath, eyeing the glowering reptile as she sat, cross legged, on the grass.

"It's about body language," Sarah Jane insisted. "We need to make ourselves look as harmless as possible, buy ourselves some time – put your hands on your knees, in plain sight."

Tentatively, Martha did as she was told, resisting the urge to flinch as the nearest local - the leader, she supposed - took another few steps forwards and screeched. A fan of skin and bone spread out around his head, and turned a bright red.

"He doesn't look very happy," Martha observed.

"Don't worry, it's mostly for show," Sarah Jane murmured. "He doesn't want to seem afraid of us in front of the others." The reptile's eyes narrowed at the sound of her voice, tilting his head to the side once more as he tightened his grip on his weapon, and Sarah Jane smothered a tiny squeak. "Or maybe he's going to kill us."

As if on cue, the creature lifted the stick above his head, and Sarah Jane and Martha scrabbled back and onto their feet.

"Now would be a good time, Jack," Martha muttered, to the air at large, as the other two reptiles crouched and circled them.

"Typical, I survive over a week here, by myself, and now it looks like I'll get killed seconds before I get rescued," Sarah Jane sighed. "My life could do with a little less irony."

The reptiles screeched, their voices a painful pitch, and Martha and Sarah Jane clapped their hands over their ears. Suddenly, Sarah Jane began to laugh. "After all this, killed by a sonic w—"

And the earth gave way in a flash of bright light, and Martha had a brief moment to realise what was happening before—

"—ave!"

"WHAT?" Martha shouted, as Jack helped her to her feet.

"I SAID—"

Jack leapt forward, and clapped a hand over Sarah Jane's mouth, putting a finger on his lips, in the universal symbol for quiet. He pointed over their shoulders, and said something Martha couldn't make out, but she didn't need to.

Jack had figured out where the door was, while she gone. She smiled with relief; she hadn't wanted to chance a transmat beam while still in the TAADIS, too many things could go wrong. Jack tapped her on the shoulder, and scribbled something on his notepad. "_What happened to your hearing?"_

"Dinosaurs with Squeaky voices!" she said aloud. She was still shouting, she sensed, but not so loudly. "It's temporary! Should be okay in a few hours!"

Jack nodded, and scribbled in his notepad again. "_We should get out of here. I've called my team, they'll collect the TAADIS in the morning, I'll put it in deep storage until the Doctor turns up again."_

Martha bit her lip but nodded. It was not as if she could bring the TAADIS to the UNIT base without a hell of a lot of explaining. Sometimes, there was an advantage to being the boss, even the boss of Torchwood.

Sarah Jane looked over Jack's shoulder and read. "Turns up?" she yelled. "Where's he gone?" Jack wrote furiously in the notebook, and held it up for her. Sarah frowned as she read it, but nodded. "Lets go!"

They stepped out of the TAADIS, and Jack grabbed both of them by the arm. "Ready?" he mouthed.

The both nodded, and the transmat whipped them away from the room

* * *

Light suddenly flooded through Martha's sleep and she groaned. "Oh God, don't do that," she groaned. "I feel like I've the worst hangover in the world; which I wouldn't have minded, if I'd actually got drunk in the _first _place."

"Probably a combination of the transmat beam and the technology the TAADIS uses," Jack said, his tone unusually short.

Martha cracked open an eye. "What's wrong?"

"It's gone, the TAADIS," he said flatly. "My team got there first thing this morning, and found only an empty room."

Suddenly, Martha felt very, very awake. "Professor McNamora!" she said.

Jack's eyes narrowed. "What about her?"

"She's a Timelord," Martha said. "Or one masquerading as a human, anyways. She was the one in the hologram. They have the same face, although Professor McNamora's is quite a few decades older."

"And you didn't think this was important enough to share 'til now?" He looked at her incredulously.

"I can't explain it," Martha said, as she hurriedly threw on her clothes. "It's as if I felt it was somehow…private."

"Sounds like someone put the whammy on you," Jack observed.

A low tap on the door, heralded Sarah Jane's arrival. "Are you decent?"

"Just about," Martha said, as she grabbed her bag and wrenched open the door. "Coming with us?"

"Coming where?" Sarah Jane asked.

"To see a human Timelord about some Gallifreyan tablets," Jack said.

Sarah Jane blinked. "Oh, just the usual, then."

* * *

The office was empty when they arrived. The drawers were cleared out, the books on the shelves taken, the room completely bare of all the little knick knacks that had made the office seemed lived in and used, the last time Martha had been there.

There was only one thing left in the room that wasn't a standard piece of furniture. It was an antique lady's wristwatch, laid out carefully in the centre of the desk.

"A message for us?" Jack wondered aloud.

"I doubt it," Sarah Jane said. "Timelords don't really consider human beings when they make their plans; even the more amiable ones, like the Doctor. My guess is, it's a message for the Doctor himself."

"Why _did_ you come here?" Martha asked, suddenly.

"An anonymous tip," Sarah Jane admitted. "A letter that came in the mail, with a set of coordinates in Gallifreyan, and clipping from the Times about the collection." She laughed. "I thought it was from the Doctor. I mean, how could I think it was anybody else? He _is_ the last of the Timelords, after all."

"Not any more," Martha said softly, as she picked up the timepiece, and turned it over. Gallifreyan symbols were etched into the back of the timepiece and along the inside of the strap. Was it the tablets that first triggered her dreams, dreams like the Doctor had had, when he was John Smith? Had some part of her, hidden in her human self, looked at them and cried: mine, mine, this is mine?

"It wasn't her," Sarah Jane said, breaking her train of thought. "I don't know what she is now, but she was human last time I met her. I can always tell. It's in the eyes."

Martha nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, she was human when I saw her, too," she said. "I wonder what happened to change that?"

"She's probably long gone," Jack said. "Disappeared to another dimension in her ship."

"She'll be back," Martha said, as she pocketed the watch. "She'll come looking for the Doctor."

"And there is another mystery," Sarah Jane sighed. "I wonder where he is?"

Martha felt a small pang, but ignored it. Time to be a grown up, and leave childish things behind her…

Nevertheless…

"He'll be back, wherever he's gone," she said softly. "He hates unfinished business."

**-----FINIS-----**


End file.
